While uncertainty marks the commissioning of several transport infrastructure projects scheduled to be completed this year,the citys development authority is confident that the much-delayed Chembur-Wadala monorail will at least be opened to public this December.

Last week,a team of senior executives of Malaysias Scomi Engineering and Indias Larsen & Toubro,which together are in charge of the monorail,visited the project site and assured the development authority that the countrys first monorail can be commissioned in December.

UPS Madan,metropolitan commissioner at the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA),said,We had called the chairman of Scomi and other higher management last week and they said the issues at hand would be sorted out by December. We hope to start the monorail this year.

After several delays due to issues related to land acquisition,environment hurdles and difficulties in construction,the MMRDA had last year said it would open the 8.3-km corridor latest by August this year,in a slew of projects that it planned to commission in 2013. These included the Metro,Santacruz-Chembur Link Road and the second phase of the Eastern Freeway.

However,the monorail could not be commissioned mid-2013 as the authorities came across several glitches while conducting trial runs. An official working on the project said there were issues such as the air-conditioning switching off in the middle of test runs,power fluctuations,problems with opening and closing the train door and so on.

Madan said,There had been some snags,which the Scomi officials have been trying to cover. Now,more or less,things are sorted out.

To deal with the inexperience of the Indian staff,MMRDA officials had been asking the consortium to get personnel from Kuala Lumpur who have experience in handling monorail systems.

Fifteen to 20 persons at the engineering and managerial levels have come from Kuala Lumpur. The rest of the staff with similar technical background has been deployed locally, Madan said.